Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Elite Academia's Dirty Little Secret

One of the ironies of my life in the academy is that virtually none
of the practices that have made me most successful as a teacher-
particularly the intensive individual attention I give my students both
when I have them and after they have graduated- have been used to
develop institutional practices at my own university or any where else. I
have been treated extremely well at Fordham, and given much respect for
my scholarship and teaching, but
faculty here are NOT encouraged to spend as much time with their
students as I do, much less their alumni, out of fear that it might get
in the way of their scholarship. And if that is true at Fordham, you can
imagine what it is at Yale or the other Ivies. I have received many
horror stories from graduate students at these august institutions whose
professors hold on to their work for months, never answer their emails,
and give them only the most perfunctory attention even after they have
been awarded prestigious fellowships to attend these institutions. In a
million years i would never treat one of my students, with that kind of
disrespect. Yes disrespect, neglect, unanswered emails, papers returned
without real comments, are par for the course in many of our high
prestige institutions.

I would never exchange my life for one of those professors, even
though their salary may be higher than mine and my workload higher. But
they, rather than me, are being held up as models of how a successful
academic is supposed to comport themselves

That is one of the dirty little secrets of academia. The deep
investment in my students careers and academic performance that I pride
myself on is perceived as an eccentricity or an anachronism

And maybe that helps explain why so many graduates of elite colleges
have so little respect for professors. and the teaching profession
generally.